Attacking the fortified settlement, the
raiders killed Silas Parker, nine-year-
old Cynthia Ann’s father, and carried
off Cynthia Ann, her six-year-old
brother John, Mrs. Rachel Plummer
and her son James, and Elizabeth
Kellogg.
When found in an Indian encamp-
ment on Dec. 18, 1860, Cynthia
Ann had been living among the
Comanche some 24 years. Famously
— some would say infamously —
she had no desire to be rescued and
never adjusted to life among her
“own kind.” She tried to escape back
to her band of Comanche nomads on
several occasions.
Interestingly, approaching the
encampment Goodnight found and
picked up a Bible dropped by the
Indians, a copy of the “Good Book”
belonging to Mrs. Ezra Sherman
(Martha) of Parker County who in
late November had been tied to
the ground, violated and had three
arrows shot into her belly. (Some
accounts have her scalped as well
and living four days, delivering a
stillborn child before dying.) The
Indians, of course, were not seeking
salvation in the Bible, but protection,
nonetheless. “‘The Indians knew as
well as we did the resistance paper
had against bullets,’” Goodnight
said. “‘It offered more resistance than
anything we had upon the frontier
unless it was cotton. When they
robbed a house they invariably took
all the books they could find, using
the paper to pack their shields, which
were made of a circular bow of wood
two or three feet across, over each
side of which was drawn the tough-
Kit Carson
35